14 DAY TRIAL // This coming March 29, at 8.30 p.m. local time, hundreds of homes, offices, and famous landmarks across the world will turn off their lights and remain in the dark for a full hour. This will happen not to try to cut electricity costs for this month, but in order to celebrate Earth Hour 2014.
This celebration has been around for several years now. Thus, it was launched in Australia by green group the World Wildlife Fund back in 2007, and it has since become the world's biggest and most popular environmental event.
The World Wildlife Fund says that, just last year, some 7,000 towns and cities spread across as many as 154 different countries celebrated Earth Hour, and that, this year, even more folks will participate in this event, The Guardian informs.
What makes this year's Earth Hour a wee more special than the ones before it is the fact that this celebration is to take place just a couple of days before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is scheduled to release its latest report on how climate change will impact human society and the natural world.
“It's fortuitous timing that as millions of people take part in WWF's Earth Hour, the world's leading scientists release the latest IPCC report, which highlights the various impacts of climate change,” Colin Butfield with the World Wildlife Fund branch in the United Kingdom said in a statement.
“The significance of these two events is massive. Climate change is the biggest environmental threat facing our planet – it's real, it's happening right now, and we need to act fast,” Colin Butfield, a director of public engagement and campaigns for the organization, went on to stress.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, some of the landmarks that will turn off their lights for one full hour this coming Saturday are the Empire State Building in New York, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel Tower, and Moscow's Kremlin and Red Square.
As reported, this year's Earth Hour has one very special ambassador. Thus, just a few weeks ago, Spider-Man announced his full support for this initiative, and asked that people show how much they cared about our good old planet by visiting a crowdsourcing and a crowdfunding platform dubbed Earth Hour Blue, and getting behind one of the green-oriented campaigns listed there.
Besides, the cast of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” is to be present in Singapore on March 29, and will celebrate Earth Hour 2014 at the local Marina Bay. Movie director Marc Webb is expected to also be present at this event.